Various establishments seek to attract patrons by offering something of value to those prospective patrons who enter the establishment or who purchase particular products. Such offers may be in the nature of a promised free gift to each patron, to be awarded when the patron enters the establishment. In these games, every person entering the establishment, or every person entering the establishment and meeting certain predetermined qualifications may receive the same gift. Likewise, incentive schemes to induce purchase of particular products or services ordinarily award the same gift to each purchaser. Other, similar schemes utilize an element of random chance. For example, in a so called "match and win" promotion, tokens bearing differing indicia, such as different pictures or combinations of alphanumeric characters may be distributed to prospective patrons. Different prizes are associated with some or all of the different indicia, and the prize associated with each indicia is posted or otherwise made known within the establishment. Thus, the prospective patron must enter the establishment to determine what, if any, prize he has won. Often, the various indicia include one or more very rare indicia applied to only a few of the tokens and associated with prizes of significant value and other, common indicia applied to the remaining tokens and associated with prizes of minimal value or with no prize at all. As only a few patrons will win prizes of significant value, the total value of prizes distributed in the scheme will not pose a prohibitive cost to the sponsor of the scheme. Nonetheless, the possibility, albeit remote, of winning a prize of significant value provides a powerful incentive to prospective patrons. Although games of this nature can be a useful marketing tool, they suffer from significant drawbacks. Manufacture and distribution of the tokens is costly. Security measures must be employed to prevent persons involved in distribution of the tokens from calling out those tokens bearing the rare indicia associated with valuable prizes and diverting those tokens to their own use. The security measures add to the cost of conducting the game. Moreover, these games provide minimal entertainment to the patron. After the patron has determined what prize he has won, the game is over insofar as he is concerned. The game thus has no value whatever in inducing the customer to remain in the establishment. Games of this nature normally are not integrated with any mechanism or compiling a list of patrons entering the establishment for use in future promotional efforts.
Other promotional schemes have been conducted using identical tokens, such as identical coupons printed in newspaper advertisements and coupons incorporated as part of packages for goods. Ordinarily, all of the tokens or coupons used in such a scheme are identical and entitle the person holding the coupon to the same value. For example, coupons can be printed in a newspaper offering a discount on a specific item of merchandise in a store. Also, packaged goods often carry coupons which either entitle the customer to a discount on subsequent purchase of the goods or which can be redeemed for unrelated merchandise. Many of these promotions involve redemption by mail. In such promotions, the coupon or token may be imprinted with a machine readable code such as a bar code. Where packaged goods are involved, the bar code may be the universal product code or "UPC" code used to identify the goods for inventory and sale purposes. Promotions of this nature generally do not provide any element of randomness. Thus, each consumer may acquire the same item of relatively small value by presenting or redeeming the coupon or token. There is no chance for the consumer to acquire a highly valuable prize.
Thus, despite the considerable effort that has been applied heretofore towards improvements in promotional schemes, there are still needs for further improvement.
The present invention addresses these needs.